on the world wide web

From the Archives

In 2010-2011 we assisted the City of Foster City with the existing conditions analysis for the Land Use & Circulation Element of its General Plan. This involved lots of photos.

Foster City is a master-planned “new town” founded in the 1960s on engineered landfill in the marshes of the San Francisco Bay. The city was named after T. Jack Foster, a real estate magnate who owned much of the land comprising the city and who was instrumental in its initial design.

The neighborhoods in Foster City are numbered: Neighborhoods 1 through 9, as well as C, L, PT, TC and VP. The street names area also named around themes such as fish, ports and famous explorers. Neighborhoods 1 and 2 were covered in a previous entry; followed by Neighborhoods 3 & 4 in a subsequent entry.

Winston Square newspaper advertisement – May 25, 1974

Neighborhood 5 was first Foster City neighborhood to be built out of order. It was developed in the 1970s, and consists entirely of multifamily condominium and cluster developments; there are no detached single family homes. The developments provide a showcase of 1970s architectural design and site planning, including the iconic white and blue “The Islands” and “Lido Island” condominiums which overlook Foster City’s Central Lake.

Neighborhood 5 also included the Charter Square shopping center, which is shown in this collection of photos but has since been torn down to build a new elementary school.

Through the years of the consulting business we compiled a lot of photos, so an aspect of this site it to provide a venue for pulling those out of the archives. Here is a handful of photos produced for a proposal for Williams, California. The photos were taken in September 2009:

Through the years of the consulting business we compiled a lot of photos, so an aspect of this site it to provide a venue for pulling those out of the archives. Here is a handful of photos produced for a proposal for a housing revitalization strategy for the Greenbush and Vilas neighborhoods in Madison, Wisconsin. The photos were taken in June 2009:

Through the years of the consulting business we compiled a lot of photos, so part of this site will be to provide a venue for pulling those out of the archives. Here is a handful of photos produced for a project studying the Maple Ash neighborhood in Tempe, Arizona.

Maple Ash is the oldest remaining neighborhood in Tempe, located south of downtown and west of ASU main campus. It is characterized by lush green landscaping, including large trees and grassy lawns. Even the alleys behind the houses have a lush character, with oleander and shrubbery spilling over from the backyards. Given the desert location, the lush landscaping is especially extraordinary.

The neighborhood was subdivided in the 1910s and 1920s, and the homes were built in the subsequent decades. Homes are typically modest in scale, with a wide range of styles. The architectural character of the homes together with the lush landscaping makes for a distinctive setting.

For a time I had two parallel careers: city planning consulting and real estate agent. Though I’d studied city planning, I’d also long had a real estate license so I could help out in my partner’s business on the weekends. In 2005 with the strong local property market I went full time into real estate sales while my planning consulting was fledgling.

During that time I got a listing for a loft that was in the popular South of Market (SOMA) neighborhood. Life in SOMA varies block-to-block, with snazzy new lofts and highrises on one block, and skid row and rescue missions on the next. It is the diversity that makes the neighborhood interesting and provides a place for pretty much everyone, but can provide a challenge for marketing a property depending on which of those blocks it is located. My loft listing was on one of the more troubled blocks, one with more than its share of boarded-up buildings and illicit activity occurring in broad daylight. Yet within two or three blocks were the bars, restaurants and markets that prospective loft-dwellers would be attracted to.

In an effort to encourage prospective buyers to “look there, not here” I took a series of neighborhood photos to accompany the internet property listing. The photos included the various popular hang-outs in SOMA at the time.

A decade later, SOMA is a bit more snazzy and quite a bit less diverse than it was then. And at the time these photos were taken, the neighborhood had already been notable for how much it had changed from previous decades. So in a sense, these photos offer a time capsule of a point in time of an ever-changing neighborhood.

Through the years of the consulting business we compiled a lot of photos, so part of this site will be to provide a venue for pulling those out of the archives. Here is a handful of photos produced for two different proposals for San Carlos, California in 2007 and 2010:

From 2007-09 we worked on the Downtown Plan for Scottsdale, Arizona. This was a particularly special project since I’d grown up in Scottsdale, twenty years earlier. The downtown was going through a resurgence and people were excited to work on the plan.

Like the rest of our projects, there were lots of photos. This second set was taken Old Town in the heat of the summer – which explains the relatively deserted streets. A cool ice cream soda at the Sugar Bowl would have hit the spot just right.

In 2010-2011 we assisted the City of Foster City with the existing conditions analysis for the Land Use & Circulation Element of its General Plan. This involved lots of photos.

Foster City is a master-planned “new town” founded in the 1960s on engineered landfill in the marshes of the San Francisco Bay. The city was named after T. Jack Foster, a real estate magnate who owned much of the land comprising the city and who was instrumental in its initial design.

The neighborhoods in Foster City are numbered: Neighborhoods 1 through 9, as well as C, L, PT, TC and VP. The street names area also named around themes such as fish, ports and famous explorers. Neighborhoods 1 and 2 were covered in a previous entry; this entry covers Neighborhoods 3 & 4.

Neighborhood 3 was built concurrently with Neighborhood 2. The homes were built in the late 1960s and the condominiums and apartments in later years. Streets in Neighborhood 3 are named after fish, such as Tarpon and Marlin.There are a number of parks including Marlin Park featuring a beach along the lagoon shore.

Neighborhood 4 was the last Foster City subdivision to be built “in order”; Neighborhoods 9 and 8 came next rather than Neighborhood 5. Streets are named after ships, or parts of ships, such as Mainsail Court and Compass Street. In a departure from the curved, interconnected streets in the earlier Foster City neighborhoods, streets in Neighborhood 4 are rectilinear and organized into a distinct pattern of courts (cul-de-scas). A neighborhood park joins up the ends of the courts. The Marlin Cove Shopping Center, initially built concurrently with the homes, was redeveloped in the 2000s as a mixed-use center.

Through the years of the consulting business we compiled a lot of photos, so part of this site will be to provide a venue for pulling those out of the archives. Here is a handful of photos produced for a proposal for Jasper, Indiana taken in the fall of 2008:

Jasper is located in southern Indiana, amid scenic rolling wooded hills. I visited on a rainy Saturday to take photos, and most of these photos were taken from the car. Since it was a dark, wet day the original color photos looked a bit lackluster and did not capture the spirit of the place, so for the proposal I converted them to black and white. This was before Instagram and newly available filters – today there would be many more options to enhance the photos and build on the unique style of the place.

When we were working on the Scottsdale Downtown Plan and renting an apartment in Downtown Scottsdale, we’d often drive down Thomas Road on our treks into Phoenix. On our way we’d pass by an unusual mobile home park featuring mobile homes flanked by permanently-built structures. After driving by countless times, we pulled over one day and took these photos. It’s called Oasis Park and features a fantastic array of mid-century architecture, both factory-built and site-built.

“Unique” is the word Oasis Park uses to describe itself on its website:

The word “unique” is one of the few in the English language that cannot be modified. There is no “very unique” or “a little unique” or “somewhat unique”. It stands alone. Above all else.

So, too, does Oasis Park. From the one-of-a-kind architecture of its homes to the perfect Scottsdale location to its welcoming residents, Oasis Park stands alone as that “unique” place to call home in the Valley of the Sun.

Reading up on the park on the website and other web articles, we learn that Oasis Park was created in the mid-1950s on nearly 15 acres in the midst of cotton fields. A drive-in theater sat across the road, long since replaced with office buildings. The first residents moved arrived in 1957 to find shuffleboard courts, a putting green, a 54-foot heated pool with a rock waterfall, a library inside the clubhouse, an on-site hobby shop for men, and a pink laundry room with matching pink washers and pink dryers. The amenities alone help set the park apart from other mobile home communities. Eventually 95 couples filled the park, maneuvering massive 55-foot mobile homes into their designated lots. Residents were required to add “ramadas” to the existing structures, and some opted to add more than what was required.

According to the reports, most residents were (and still are) winter visitors, maintaining homes elsewhere. Though originally a rental community, residents now own their homes and are shareholders in the Oasis Park Company, the corporation they formed in order to buy the land on which their homes sit. Each resident now 1/95th of the total land and decisions about the park must be approved by the majority.

The community was always intended for older couples whose children were grown, restricted to members 55 years old and older. At one time, Oasis Park would not let in widows; however, many of the homes are now occupied by single women. Prospective buyers are interviewed and must be approved by the Oasis Park membership.

The original mobile home is still part of the structure, as a rule, but each home has a uniqueness of its own. This comes both from the mobile home and the ramada structures, which create interesting compositions. In some examples the original mobile home is a distinctive element unto itself, whereas others are so fully integrated to be nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the structure.

I’m not sure which aspect of these structures I like best. Many (maybe even most) of the mobile homes are midcentury vintage, with cool styling that has come full circle to be very hip. But then the ramadas themselves are pretty great too. The two together are like nothing I’d seen before.